172 cup
It's been a while since I posted anything, so thought I'd share what's happened to the cup whilst I've had it... It definitely won't be to everyone's taste, but I'm a lot happier with it as it is now!
It was without doubt 'chavy' when I first got it, and although most will perceive it as still being 'chavy', it's acceptable now!
It was a fairly good deal when I got it back in early 2009, but it had 17" Inovit wheels, budget tyres, a Longlife exhaust with no centre silencer (couldn't talk at 30mph), an open cone Pipercross, Apex springs and bright silver grills:
Despite the cambelt having been 'done recently' I didn't fancy the risk... so, first things first, I changed the belt. The first real change was the exhaust... A K-Tec Stealth with centre section. This seemed fine at first, and not long after that I got their sports cat to go with it.
The motorway drone got too much though, so I reverted back to standard exhaust but kept the sports cat... which is the set up I've still got now! Quiet on motorways and around town, but the noise pedal still works when you want it to.
Next up was the Pipercross, which got replaced with a V6 box. I had this for a few years, but then fancied a change a put a home brew K-Tec set up on it (with another Pipercross filter!).
Other changes include a RS Tuner remap, a smaller black aerial, uprated dogbone mount, short shift gear linkage, sportlines, skoda splitter and some Rota R Specs from Rarerims (no issues with Rota personally). The car looked like this after that (except the splitter, obviously):
The next thing that had to go was the steering wheel - which had the usual issues with thumb grips and melting - so I got a retrimmed wheel from Arran 182 on here. Before, and before and after:
Since then, I haven't done too much other than the usual servicing items... until last weekend when I finally had enough of the bright silver grills etc. So I tried to match the colour of the wheels (I appreciate that I could have gone back to black, but the silver had grown on me... a bit!). The sport badge was already off, and the Renault had to go due to the effort required to paint and restick it, lazy I know! I also smoothed the bullets, and finally sorted the hazing on the headlights out:
And that is where it is now. Future plans are standard/uprated engine mounts (still can't decide after reading countless opinions) and trying to avoid the urge to buy a RS2 intake or cams!
To be fair, I'm happy enough with it as it is... fun and fairly economical, can't complain really!
It was without doubt 'chavy' when I first got it, and although most will perceive it as still being 'chavy', it's acceptable now!
It was a fairly good deal when I got it back in early 2009, but it had 17" Inovit wheels, budget tyres, a Longlife exhaust with no centre silencer (couldn't talk at 30mph), an open cone Pipercross, Apex springs and bright silver grills:
Despite the cambelt having been 'done recently' I didn't fancy the risk... so, first things first, I changed the belt. The first real change was the exhaust... A K-Tec Stealth with centre section. This seemed fine at first, and not long after that I got their sports cat to go with it.
The motorway drone got too much though, so I reverted back to standard exhaust but kept the sports cat... which is the set up I've still got now! Quiet on motorways and around town, but the noise pedal still works when you want it to.
Next up was the Pipercross, which got replaced with a V6 box. I had this for a few years, but then fancied a change a put a home brew K-Tec set up on it (with another Pipercross filter!).
Other changes include a RS Tuner remap, a smaller black aerial, uprated dogbone mount, short shift gear linkage, sportlines, skoda splitter and some Rota R Specs from Rarerims (no issues with Rota personally). The car looked like this after that (except the splitter, obviously):
The next thing that had to go was the steering wheel - which had the usual issues with thumb grips and melting - so I got a retrimmed wheel from Arran 182 on here. Before, and before and after:
Since then, I haven't done too much other than the usual servicing items... until last weekend when I finally had enough of the bright silver grills etc. So I tried to match the colour of the wheels (I appreciate that I could have gone back to black, but the silver had grown on me... a bit!). The sport badge was already off, and the Renault had to go due to the effort required to paint and restick it, lazy I know! I also smoothed the bullets, and finally sorted the hazing on the headlights out:
And that is where it is now. Future plans are standard/uprated engine mounts (still can't decide after reading countless opinions) and trying to avoid the urge to buy a RS2 intake or cams!
To be fair, I'm happy enough with it as it is... fun and fairly economical, can't complain really!
